University Department of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, UK.
Emotion. 2010 Feb;10(1):1-7. doi: 10.1037/a0018360.
The author reviews the articles in the Special Section on Mindfulness, starting from the assumption that emotions evolved as signaling systems that need to be sensitive to environmental contingencies. Failure to switch off emotion is due to the activation of mental representations of present, past, and future that are created independently of external contingencies. Mindfulness training can be seen as one way to teach people to discriminate such "simulations" from objects and contingencies as they actually are. The articles in this Special Section show how even brief laboratory training can have effects on processing affective stimuli; that long-term meditation practitioners show distinct reactions to pain; that longer meditation training is associated with differences in brain structure; that 8 weeks' mindfulness practice brings about changes in the way emotion is processed showing that participants can learn to uncouple the sensory, directly experienced self from the "narrative" self; that mindfulness training can affect working memory capacity, and enhance the ability of participants to talk about past crises in a way that enables them to remain specific and yet not be overwhelmed. The implications of these findings for understanding emotion and for further research is discussed.
作者从情绪作为需要对环境偶然性敏感的信号系统这一假设出发，对“正念”特刊中的文章进行了回顾。情绪无法关闭是因为当前、过去和未来的心理表象被激活，而这些表象是独立于外部偶然性而产生的。正念训练可以被视为一种教导人们区分这些“模拟”与实际存在的对象和偶然性的方法。本特刊中的文章表明，即使是短暂的实验室训练也会对处理情感刺激产生影响；长期冥想的练习者对疼痛有明显的反应；更长时间的冥想训练与大脑结构的差异有关；8 周的正念练习会改变情绪处理方式，表明参与者可以学习将感官上直接体验到的自我与“叙事”自我分离开来；正念训练可以影响工作记忆能力，并增强参与者以一种既能保持具体又不被淹没的方式谈论过去危机的能力。讨论了这些发现对理解情绪和进一步研究的意义。
